n the Letters we see a man literally hungering and thirsting after
affection, after love--a man cut off by a cruel stroke of fate from his
natural solace, from the centre of a home.

"God took from me a lady dear,"

he says, in the most touching medley of doggerel and poetry, made
"instead of writing my _Punch_ this morning." Losing "a lady dear," he
takes refuge as he may, he finds comfort as he can, in all the affections
within his reach, in the society of an old college friend and of his
wife, in the love of all children, beginning with his own; in a generous
liking for all good work and for all good fellows.

Did any man of letters except Scott ever write of his rivals as Thackeray
wrote of Dickens? Artists are a jealous race. "Potter hates potter, and
poet hates poet," as Hesiod said so long ago. This jealousy is not mere
envy, it is really a strong sense of how things ought to be done, in any
art, touched with a natural preference for a man's own way of doing them.
Now, what could be more unlike than the "ways" of Dickens and Thackeray?
The subjects chosen by these great authors are not more diverse than
their styles. Thackeray writes like a scholar, not in the narrow sense,
but rather as a student and a master of all the refinements and resources
of language. Dickens copies the chaff of the street, or he roams into
melodramatics, "drops into poetry"--blank verse at least--and touches all
with peculiarities, we might say mannerisms, of his own. I have often
thought, and even tried to act on the thought, that some amusing
imaginary letters might be written, from characters of Dickens about
characters of Thackeray, from characters of Thackeray about characters of
Dickens. They might be supposed to meet each other in society, and
describe each other. Can you not fancy Captain Costigan on Dick
Swiveller, Blanche Amory on Agnes, Pen on David Copperfield, and that
"tiger" Steerforth? What would the family solicitor of "The Newcomes"
have to say of Mr. Tulkinghorn? How would George Warrington appreciate
Mr. Pickwick? Yes, the two great novelists were as opposed as two men
could be--in manner, in style, in knowledge of books, and of the world.
And yet how admirably Thackeray writes about Dickens, in his letters as
in his books! How he delights in him! How manly is that emulation which
enables an author to see all the points in his rival, and not to carp at
them, but to praise, and be stimulated to keener